It was but the voice of revulsion from amazement, to "cheer up his sprites" and summon resolution.
When Macbeth originates any thing out of himself, that Self is not daunted, for it is too deeply compromised in fact and fancy. But when some phenomenon threatens him from a quarter that is outside the limit of his own creative power, as when Birnam Wood is descried coming toward Dunsinane, he is puzzled, and says:--
"I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth. I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun."
Nothing has disturbed him till he appreciates that some agency which he does not control can transplant a forest at his castle gate. The apparition of the witches scarcely lifts his eyebrows. "Speak, if you can," is the calm greeting. When he starts, and seems to fear "things that do sound so fair," it is because the shapes he conjures become suddenly endowed with tongues, and he hears his own ambition syllabled. For a man is not proof against shrinking at the first moment that lends to the "airy nothing" of his desire a distinct name and purpose. He is astonished at the audacious phrasing of his hopes, and he resents at first what seems definite enough to be an impeachment from something not himself; yet not until that moment was it really his Self. What phantoms have thus leaped out of vacuity into the midnight chambers of desire! What voices have drawn the startled answers of a crime that did not suspect this overlooking! But when the man's Self has undergone this real birth, and the secret parturition becomes a breathing child of consciousness, he soon accepts his own new self, and forgets that it was irritated into a cry by the first salutes of the atmosphere. Casting away all repugnance, Macbeth exclaims to his wicked wishes, before they have a chance to vanish,--
"Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more! ... Speak, I charge you!"
So the dagger that wavers in the heated air of his soul does not surprise him,--"Come, let me clutch thee!" Really, he expected to grasp it; for it was precisely the kind of instrument he thought of using, the very shape and workmanship thereof. There's nothing to perturb until he draws from his belt its counterpart, yet sees the other still solid in the air. That sets him to pondering: his